Mountain moved, all lanes reopened
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
It started as a little thing, worth just a few lines in the newspaper:
Top photo Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser Above photo courtesy of Dept. of Transportation
"A small landslide closed one lane of Kalaniana'ole Highway near Castle Junction last night, but there were no reports of injuries or damage."
Top, Castle Junction looking Kailua and Kane'ohe bound after the cliff had been cut back. The project took 19 months, cost $7.8 million and required the removal of 18,000 truckloads of dirt. Above is a picture showing the project as it was first proposed.
Now, 19 months, $7.8 million and 18,000 truckloads of dirt later, the little story that grew into a major traffic event and engineering accomplishment has come to a conclusion.
The state Transportation Department reopened all three mauka-bound lanes of Kalaniana'ole Highway to traffic yesterday, bringing an end to one of the state's largest highway projects in more than a decade.
Along the way, the saga was filled with danger, protests, frustration, endangered birds, innovation and compromise. Not to mention lots of rain.
The end, though, is a safe, happy one.
A dangerously eroding cliff, prone to landslides, has been pared back into a gently sloped, landscaped hillside, and the 141,000 Windward motorists who pass the site every day are once again free to move around the county.
And it has all been done cheaper and with less disruption than many people thought possible.
"The best thing about the whole thing is that it's done and everything will get back to normal again," said Mitch D'Olier, chief executive officer of Kane'ohe Ranch, which is based just a few yards from the project's epicenter.
Back in November 2002, Castle Junction was just another number — No. 5, actually — on the state Transportation Department's list of most dangerous rockslide areas. It was going to be fixed when time and money became available.
Starting in May 2003, however, the hillside began to erode with almost every new rain.
Within a month, DOT had decided it needed to take action using emergency money. It considered cutting away a few feet of the hillside or building a concrete wall to create a buffer zone between the falling rocks and passing vehicles.
Then things got complicated.
"When the engineers started climbing the mountain, they found these huge cracks at the top. It was possible the whole thing could collapse," said DOT spokesman Scott Ishikawa.
The mountain couldn't be fixed; it had to be moved. Cost estimates soared, as did fears that a long-term earth-moving project would snare thousands of Windward commuters daily in a nightmare of truck crossings, lane closings and near gridlock.
Top photo Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser Above photo courtesy of Dept. of Transportation
The initial plans by Goodfellow Brothers Inc., the firm that won the $7.8 million state contract for the work, did nothing to allay the fears, said Jim Corcoran, a Kailua Neighborhood Board member who lives in Maunawili, not far from where workers were planning to dump more than 250,000 cubic yards of dirt skimmed from the eroding hillside.
Top, Castle Junction today, looking Honolulu-bound, as compared with the proposed concept, above. All three Honolulu-bound lanes are now open. Crews used earth-moving equipment loaded with new technology that let them work from the top down to reduce the slope's grade from nearly 90 degrees to about 30 degrees.
"Everything turned out better because we screamed and yelled," Corcoran said. "If we had just let them do what they were going to do, it would been a nightmare for 10 months."
Art Lambert, O'ahu regional manager for Goodfellow Brothers, agreed that the eventual success of the project hinged on several key changes worked out in talks with the Windward community.
"Finding an acceptable, suitable place to dump all the material was the first really big thing," Lambert said. Original plans called for hauling much of the dirt to a landfill in Leeward O'ahu, a time-consuming, expensive process.
"Then we came up with a better mousetrap," Lambert said.
The plan involved dumping the dirt — more than 10 acres worth — in a large valley on Kane'ohe Ranch property, just across the road from the work site.
Initially, that meant sending the 20-ton trucks across the busy highway throughout the day.
"Can you imagine shutting down the highway every four minutes for six or seven months?" Corcoran said. "That wasn't going to work."
So, Goodfellow Brothers worked with the state and Kailua residents to develop an alternative plan, one that took trucks off the highway and sent them on a short loop around the area.
"That was the second big thing," Lambert said. "Coming up with a traffic plan that kept two lanes open most of the time really helped."
A plan to work 24 hours a day was derailed by concerns about disturbing the nesting habits of endangered shearwaters that live in the area, but the state — wanting to get the work done as quickly as possible — kicked in by creating an early morning contraflow lane on the highway. "That really helped," said state Sen. Fred Hemmings.
By the time work began on the project in January, state officials were optimistic that it could be done in six months with minimum disruption.
Then it began to rain. And rain. And rain.
"It was definitely one of the wettest years in a long time," Lambert said. Crews lost dozens of days to the rain. Even when it wasn't raining, it was too dangerous to work.
"Steep slope. Heavy machinery. Lots of mud. They just add up to a situation that makes it too dangerous to proceed," Ishikawa said.
Slowly, though, the hillside began to take on its new slimmed-down shape. Using old-fashioned heavy earth-moving equipment loaded with new technology such as satellite-controlled global positioning devices, crews were able to work from the top of the mountain down, eventually reducing the nearly 90-degree slope to something closer to 30 degrees, Lambert said.
"We couldn't have asked more from the technology," he said. "Not many contractors are using it here, but it worked fabulously. Our projections about how much land would be moved were almost exactly right."
Although there were still some frustratingly long delays for drivers, complaints declined as the work progressed and drivers adjusted times and found alternate routes around the work site, Ishikawa said.
"It really helped that everybody could see work progressing as they drove by every day," Ishikawa said. "The public was patient and I think they could see that the work was something that was making the area safer, which was the bottom line."
The project included a wider turn lane and an expanded gutter and shoulder area as well as repaved lanes. The new landscaped hillside was planted with a type of grass that does not require mowing, Lambert said.
For Waimanalo resident Joe Ryan, the construction work had some unexpected benefits as he made his way to his University of Hawai'i law classes each day.
"I drove around the Makapu'u way to avoid the construction and got to enjoy the beautiful views," Ryan said. "Traffic increased that way over time, too, but it was still better than going over the Pali."
He might not be so lucky in the near future, though.
Ishikawa said the state's next big rock-fall protection project is scheduled for the Makapu'u area near Sea Life Park.
"We did some work in a nearby area before and now we are going to back and finish the job."
No decision has been made on when that work will start, he said.
Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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